Briefly, On The Presumption Of Innocence

There are extremely graphic details of multiple sexual assaults in this post.

In 1992, Erika Davis alleges that she approached Michigan State University’s Police Department to report that Larry Nassar had drugged her, then raped her, and had filmed himself doing so. The MSUPD told her that, because she was an athlete, she needed to report the incident to the school’s Athletic Department. She explained that she had already done so and that the allegation had been internally dismissed. The MSUPD insisted that there was nothing that it could do, as it had no jurisdictional authority over the school’s Athletic Department.

Nassar was not investigated. Nassar kept his job. It would be 24 more years until Nassar was arrested. Nassar would eventually assault more than 400 more women.

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The presumption of innocence exists in the bedrock of American justice. No matter how occasionally that rule has been applied throughout this nation’s history, some of its loudest advocates not only insist upon its self-evident superiority, but weaponize its goodness as a trump card against anybody who would question some of its extremely obvious shortcomings. Those shortcomings are currently boiling over culturally.

And chief among those shortcomings is what the presumption of innocence ends up enabling and who suffers as a result of it. Whenever accusations are made, a coterie of men and women are ready to rush into the fold to insist that the accused is owed the presumption of innocence, especially in cases where evidence is lacking. There is no attempt to grapple with the grim reality of abuse – that sufficient evidence is rarely available, and that even when it is, it is often not seen as convincing. Nor is there any acknowledging that, fairly regularly, men’s reputations are considered more important than victims’ well-being. It should come as no surprise that this particular group of individuals affords no such presumption to accusers; if the accused are to be presumed innocent, accusers are to be presumed guilty. Of maliciousness. Of dishonesty. Of something.

Nowhere is this divide more immediately obvious than in Nassar’s case. He was an abuser who thrived because of all of the leeway that he was voluntarily afforded by those tasked to know and do better. Abusers understand this advantage, and if they do not, they are often taught it by the same justice system that allegedly exists to stop them. They learn that their crimes can be difficult, if not impossible, to prove. They learn that the legal system is fundamentally hobbled when it comes to dealing with their crimes. And they thrive knowing the advantage they enjoy over their accusers.

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In 1997, five years after Davis first says she approached MSU and the MSUPD, Larissa Boyce injured her back at a gymnastics event being held at the university. Nassar provided treatment. He scheduled weekly visits. At those visits, he repeatedly digitally penetrated Boyce, all while assuring her that such treatment was both standard and cutting edge. One of her coaches happened to ask how the treatments were going and Boyce explained what was happening; the coach told her that she needed to tell Kathie Klages, MSU’s gymnastics coach. Klages gathered Boyce and other athletes to ask them about Nassar. At least one other athlete reported experiencing treatment similar to what Boyce endured. Klages told the athletes that although she was in a position to file a report about what they told her Nassar was doing, it would risk both of the athletes themselves facing “serious consequences.” Klages probably was not wrong about that. Accusers are often put through the second hell of enduring disbelief. But Klages was not seeking to protect her athletes.

Nassar was not investigated. Nassar kept his job. It would be 19 more years until Nassar was arrested. Nassar would eventually assault more than 400 more women.

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The obvious appeal of the presumption of innocence is that it puts the burden of proof upon the other party. That the state has to prove its claims against individuals is far better than scenarios in which individuals are presumed guilty; the nation’s history is, after all, littered with examples of what it looks like when guilt is assumed. It would seem then that this leaves us stuck in a forever stalemate, with our only options being either the presumption of innocence or the presumption of guilt. These choices are thoroughly polarized, with the implication being that we either can have one, or we can have the other, but that we absolutely cannot have both.

Nassar was not investigated. Nassar kept his job. It would be 17 more years until Nassar was arrested. Nassar would eventually assault more than 400 more women

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It might be the case that those defending accused abusers are genuinely concerned with the possibility that women everywhere, emboldened by seeing multiple women come forward to report abusive behavior, will weaponize accusations against men everywhere in an attempt to achieve…well, something, although nobody is making it particularly clear what that something might be, nor why anybody would risk everything that comes along with making accusations: the abuse, the disbelief, the relentless brutality of those who seek to deny the obvious humanity of victims.

That the blowback is always the same is, perhaps, a giveaway that what we are witnessing is a deeper bit of cultural rot than simply a well-meaning concern for accused individuals themselves.

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In 2004, Brianne Randall-Gay, a 17-year-old with scoliosis, was sent to Nassar for treatment. In the aftermath of her visit, both she and her family visited the Meridian Township Police Department to report that Nassar had digitally penetrated her and grabbed her breasts. Police investigated Randall-Gay’s claims, which included visiting Nassar himself. The doctor insisted that what he had provided were ground-breaking medical treatments. Nassar showed the police a PowerPoint presentation justifying what he had done. Andrew McCready, the investigating officer, sought no additional clarification from anybody else; Nassar’s word was good. The case was never turned over to a prosecutor.

This time, Nassar was investigated. But he was allowed to clear himself. Nassar kept his job. It would be 12 more years until Nassar was arrested. Nassar would eventually assault more than 400 women.

*****

Again and again and again, Nassar enjoyed not only the presumption of cultural innocence but of legal innocence too. Again and again and again, his accusers were simultaneously told that they simply did not understand what they had experienced and that they risked severe consequences for coming forward. Again and again and again, the mechanisms that were allegedly in place to stop Nassar instead enabled him while punishing his victims a second time. Again and again and again, the same person mattered, and the same people did not.

Is this evidence of the system working? Is this evidence of the system failing? It turns out that it matters very much who gets asked.

Thomashow reported that Nassar had massaged her breast and then put his hands into her sweatpants; he massaged her vaginal area with three fingers. She tried to stop him but could not. She reported the abuse to Dr. Brooke Lemmen, Dr. Lisa DeStefano, and Dr. Jennifer Gilmore, as well as the aforementioned Teachnor-Hauk. All of them told Thomashow that what Nassar was doing was medically appropriate. Thomashow, like so many women before her, was told that her understanding of what had happened was wrong.

We cannot find that the conduct was of a sexual nature. Thus, it did not violate the sexual harassment policy. However, we find the claim helpful in that it allows us to examine certain practices at the MSU Sports Medicine Clinic.

Meanwhile, the MSUPD’s investigation occurred concurrently. Officers visited Nassar. He predictably insisted upon his innocence, copping only to have done a poor job of explaining his methods to the patient. He claimed that he was an expert in treating a patient’s pelvic floor. He produced, as he had done before, a PowerPoint presentation that he claimed exonerated him; this one was Star Trek themed, and was titled, “Pelvic Floor: Where no man has gone before.” The MSUPD sent Nassar’s case to the Ingram County Prosecutors Office. That office decided not to bring charges against Nassar. Steve Kwasnik, one of the county’s prosecutors, declared that Nassar was performing a “very innovative and helpful manipulation of ligament,” before noting that Nassar needed to “do a much better job of explaining what he is doing to the patient who rightfully might feel violated by his technique.”

Nassar had been investigated again and was again allowed to clear himself with claims that what he was doing was designed to help; he was also permitted to see patients again in the aftermath of his clearance. Those patients were not warned in advance about what Nassar had been accused of. Nassar kept his job. It would be another 16 months before Nassar was arrested. At least a dozen women have come forward to report having been abused during this period. Nassar would eventually assault more than 400 women.

*****

A system that could repeatedly find in Larry Nassar’s favor is simply not equipped to deal substantively and meaningfully with abuse. It is too tilted, overwhelmingly so, in favor of abusers and against victims. It is possible to imagine administrative fixes – including mandatory reporting with criminal consequence for those that do not, mandatory investigations of reported abuse with criminal consequence for those that abstain, and exposure to financial liability of everybody involved – but what can be done about the deep cultural cancer that leads to the wholesale dismissal of victims? What fix is there for a persistent belief that men’s reputations matter more than the well-being of victims?

It appears to have been easy for everybody involved to prefer Nassar over his victims when there were only single accusations, no matter how many of them piled up. But Denhollander coming forward, on the record, broke the dam. Nassar tried the same defense that had always worked for him before – Nassar’s lawyer went with, “Dr. Nassar, to the extent the allegations are against him, adamantly denies any misconduct at this or any other time.” – but within a year, more than 100 women had come forward, accusing Nassar of abuse, and within another year, the number had jumped to 200, and then 300, and now stands at more than 400.

Their stories did not change. Their evidence did not change. Their accusations did not change. They said the same things in 1992 that they said in 1997 that they said in 1999 that they said in 2004 that they said in 2014 that they said in 2016. Everything about what they were claiming remained remarkably consistent. It took their sheer numbers before so many could finally grasp that Nassar was the one lying. But those sheer numbers only existed because of the deference that Nassar enjoyed again and again and again. That deference is both legal and cultural, and in both cases, it acts as a shield for abusers, enabling them to continue doing what they have always done.

The popular saying goes that we would rather one hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent man go to jail. Maybe so. There are surely an incredible number of people sacrificed to achieve such an outcome. That sacrifice is worth noting and worth remembering. Their suffering matters as much as any high-minded ideal. Or at least, it ought to.

103 Responses

She reported the abuse to Dr. Brooke Lemmen, Dr. Lisa DeStefano, and Dr. Jennifer Gilmore, as well as the aforementioned Teachnor-Hauk. All of them told Thomashow that what Nassar was doing was medically appropriate.

I’m afraid that your narrative leads to a very different conclusion; it isn’t presumption of innocence that protected Nassar, it was expertise. What you describe is a sort of Medical Gnosticism where outsiders are bamboozled by powerpoints and insiders are deferential to a higher-understanding. As you write: “Nassar had been investigated again and was again allowed to clear himself with claims that what he was doing was designed to help.”

The accusers were believed, its just that the investigators were swayed by the gnosticism of experts that the methods were beyond their understanding. That’s really not the “presumption of innocence” argument you are trying to make. If there’s a presumption argument to be made in the narrative you’ve put together, its against Medical expertise and oversight.Report

I’m afraid that’s insufficient; it wasn’t simply claimed expertise, it was validated and confirmed expertise. You have the beginnings of a very strong case against institutional malfeasance by the Medical profession but you want your strong premise to underwrite your asserted premise. In order for the brief to do what you think it needs to do, there have to be dots connected between the motivations of the experts who assured authorities that the actions were justifiable – after having heard what the actions were and why those motivations hinged on a presumption of innocence among medical experts who, presumably, would know otherwise. Presumption of Innocence here seems a much weaker motivating force than other likely motivators… and your brief doesn’t account for that.Report

@marchmaine There was no confirmation in 1992. There was no confirmation in 1997. There was no confirmation in 2004. There was the assumption that Nassar was not guilty of what he was being reported to have done. Whether or not that was based on his alleged expertise, or anything else, there is still the baseline: that those being told concluded otherwise anyway. They disbelieved victims. They believed in Nassar.Report

There seems to be a growing tendency among liberal side of politics to treat sexual assault crimes as different than other crimes. This is a as calls for criminal justice reform and mistrust of police and prosecutors grows to. You can’t have it both ways. Either the burden should be on the state in all instances because prosecutors and police are not trustworthy or we assume the best of them and switch the burden to the defendant. The anti-presumption of innocence side in sex crimes has yet to propose any workable alternative.Report

Naah, it’s just short memory. Their operative mental image is of a fratty white guy type being protected by the presumption of innocence. It’s too historical for the Extremely Online to ask whether removing the presumption of innocence would have resulted in a more just outcome for, let’s say, the Central Park Five. The safeguards we already have failed them, but the solution is fewer safeguards? How many more CP5s do we mint to nail one Nasser at some theoretically earlier point in his systemic abuse?

You can see the outlines of this mental image because much of the Kavanaugh coverage (see Michelle’s Goldberg’s NYT column and most of Slate) uses cultural signifiers to do a lot of the work of filling in the copious blanks. One witness who denies it, no dates, no contemporaneous anything – matters not because we all know what happens in rich white prep school parties and frat houses, so let’s not let pesky details get in the way of the obvious. It may lead to a pleasing outcome now, but what we all (think we) know – how we fill in the blanks in the absence of evidence – is a much bigger danger to people of color.

Outside online chatter about the cause cèlebre cases, most jurors don’t have biases that are as fashionable as those held by lefty Twitter. They may fill in those larger blanks caused by lower standards differently.

That said, Kavanaugh isn’t in a criminal trial and the new Avenetti claims may change all of this. I think Kavanaugh did it, but I know it’s because I’m filling in the blanks based on the stereotypes I hold about people like him. But the point still stands: we fill in the blanks with our biases, and reasonable doubt is a bulwark against that.Report

@ltl-ftc the Central Park Five are a great example, because they did not enjoy, at any point, the presumption of innocence. So even at that level, the concept itself is hokum weaponized against outgroups.

Maybe we would want to say, “They should have been believed!” which seems like a good answer. But there is not a choice between believing the CPF and believing Nassar’s victims. It is possible to believe both. It is possible to pursue justice without deciding, ahead of time, who does and doesn’t deserve it. Or perhaps it isn’t. But if it isn’t, we should acknowledge that more openly.Report

Seems to me what this underlines more than anything else is that our cultural priors generally massively take precedence over both our stated ideals and our written laws, in terms of practical outcomes.Report

The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that guides the burden of proof in a criminal trial. When Nassar was finally brought to trial, the government was able to get a conviction despite that relatively high bar, which implies that the presumption of innocence wasn’t the reason that he was able to abuse these women for all of those years. What protected Nassar was much more a combination of institutional self-protection, bureaucratic ineptitude, the cult of expertise that @Marchmaine mentions above, and good old-fashioned misogyny.

I can think of plenty of cases where the presumption of innocence likely allowed someone to get off completely or with a much lighter sentence than what they would have gotten if the evidence had been better (Bill Cosby comes to mind, so does O.J. and George Zimmerman).

And I’m not bringing this up just to say something negative on the post. If there is a problem with the current standards that make up the burden of proof in a criminal trial and therefore affect criminal investigations, wouldn’t it be better to talk about cases where the burden of proof is actually relevant?Report

Concur with @jr, the presumption of innocence is entirely upon the government bringing criminal charges. Claiming that ideal is responsible for institutions protecting their own is burning the Savanna to kill the lion.

If you want to demonstrate that the presumption of innocence is the problem you think it is, you will need to show that society at large is consistently unwilling to enact social penalties for bad behavior for people accused of bad acts (but who avoid convictions), regardless of who the person is or what their social standing is.

What you can show is that society is too willing to assume the innocence of powerful and/or popular persons, regardless of the evidence available, and often times regardless of a criminal conviction (how many people you figure still think Bill Cosby is innocent and buy his lawyers claim that the conviction is the result of institutional racism?).Report

@oscar-gordon “you will need to show that society at large is consistently unwilling to enact social penalities for bad behavior for people accused of bad acts” That’s precisely what Nassar is an example of.Report

This is not a story about the harm caused by a too-high standard of proof in criminal trials. I don’t believe for a second that any of the people protecting Nasser did so because they felt it was more-likely-than-not he was a serial rapist but did not believe they could so-prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, I believe they did so because he was valuable to them in a way the women weren’t, and because “hysterical young girl” was a more digestible story line than “colleague is secretly a monster.” It is also clearly correct that when the claims were investigated and prosecuted by people of good faith, the burden of proof was easily met.

If this story ties to “burden of proof” questions at all, it does so only in the cultural sense that you and Oscar are discussing. In other words, when we are NOT talking about criminal lawsuits and potential incarceration, how do we assess conflicting claims about past crimes. That’s a… timely… question, fairly represented by your pull-quote, and one I think the GOP is trying very hard to get wrong.

I think your post presents a powerful reason not to apply a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard to public opprobrium, but no case at all that our criminal justice system itself requires a lower standard of proof.Report

LeeEsq: A system that could repeatedly find in Larry Nassar’s favor is simply not equipped to deal substantively and meaningfully with abuse. It is too tilted, overwhelmingly so, in favor of abusers and against victims. It is possible to imagine administrative fixes – including mandatory reporting with criminal consequence for those that do not, mandatory investigations of reported abuse with criminal consequence for those that abstain, and exposure to financial liability of everybody involved – but what can be done about the deep cultural cancer that leads to the wholesale dismissal of victims? What fix is there for a persistent belief that men’s reputations matter more than the well-being of victims?

Or, the presumption of innocence isn’t in play with sexual assault allegations against powerful men by women because we are still a patriarchal nation whose men want to protect their power at all costs. These women never got the chance to have the State advocate for them at the time the abuse occurred because their concerns were dismissed by the organs of the state whose job it was to investigate the allegations. What we want is for that to stop wholesale,Report

A system that could repeatedly find in Larry Nassar’s favor is simply not equipped to deal substantively and meaningfully with abuse. It is too tilted, overwhelmingly so, in favor of abusers and against victims. It is possible to imagine administrative fixes – including mandatory reporting with criminal consequence for those that do not, mandatory investigations of reported abuse with criminal consequence for those that abstain, and exposure to financial liability of everybody involved – but what can be done about the deep cultural cancer that leads to the wholesale dismissal of victims? What fix is there for a persistent belief that men’s reputations matter more than the well-being of victims?

This statement aptly applies to the way the Senate is dealing with allegations against the current SCOTUS nominee. In that arena, repudiating the assumption by removing those who make it from power through elections seems like a good start.

Their stories did not change. Their evidence did not change. Their accusations did not change. They said the same things in 1992 that they said in 1997 that they said in 1999 that they said in 2004 that they said in 2014 that they said in 2016. Everything about what they were claiming remained remarkably consistent. It took their sheer numbers before so many could finally grasp that Nassar was the one lying. But those sheer numbers only existed because of the deference that Nassar enjoyed again and again and again. That deference is both legal and cultural, and in both cases, it acts as a shield for abusers, enabling them to continue doing what they have always done.

Again, we see a parallel in the SCOTUS nomination. One wonders how many women have to come forward to get their stories credibly heard and acted upon? If hundreds had to be used to bring down Dr. Nassar, will a SCOTUS nominee take thousands?

The popular saying goes that we would rather one hundred guilty men go free than a single innocent man go to jail. Maybe so. There are surely an incredible number of people sacrificed to achieve such an outcome. That sacrifice is worth noting and worth remembering. Their suffering matters as much as any high-minded ideal. Or at least, it ought to.

Would that this were so, but when one looks at the number of men incarcerated while factually innocent, and one looks at their almost uniformly being men of color, one draws the conclusion that this is about protecting white male power. As was the operation conducted to protect Dr. Nassar.Report

I think it is pretty much a done deal that Kavanaugh is getting on the court. A car accident is probably more likely to keep him off the court than these hearings.

The dirty secret of democracy is that 95 percent of politics is about tribal identity. The Republicans could dump Kavanaugh and find an equally conservative candidate. However, this would be giving Democrats and/or liberals a “win” and that can’t be. So circle the wagons it is and make everything more of a spectacle by hiring the Maricopa County prosecutor to question Dr. Ford.

The causes that increased negative partisanship in the United States are decades long and complicated. We are at the Apex now.

One of the weirder aspects of this “Are we slipping into authoritarianism or not?”moment is seeing the authoritarians perform the dance of democracy and transparency. Did Trump really want to speak to the U.N. General Assembly? No. Did everyone else want to hear him? Probably not. But Trump is still the President and he speaks at the U.N. because it is a tradition.

My own two cents: the whole shebang is in the hands of Susan Collins. As she votes, so will Murkowski and a few red-state Dems.

Add: Which shows just how *internally* political this whole process has become: Kav’s approvals/support is limited pretty much to the conservative base, yet red-staters are waffling as if the purely electoral calculus isn’t crystal clear.Report

I think it is pretty much a done deal that Kavanaugh is getting on the court. A car accident is probably more likely to keep him off the court than these hearings.

You may be right; though if Murkawski and Collins want to remain Senators they will have a lot of uphill work to do if they vote to confirm. And frankly if they do the Senate may well flip.

The dirty secret of democracy is that 95 percent of politics is about tribal identity. The Republicans could dump Kavanaugh and find an equally conservative candidate. However, this would be giving Democrats and/or liberals a “win” and that can’t be. So circle the wagons it is and make everything more of a spectacle by hiring the Maricopa County prosecutor to question Dr. Ford.

It is about Nassar. He is a real person who caused real pain. He was repeatedly enabled by everybody around him. Those individuals chose to believe, again and again and again, that he was innocent.Report

The MSUPD insisted that there was nothing that it could do, as it had no jurisdictional authority over the school’s Athletic Department.

Should we give police departments more authority?

(And, quite honestly, how in the flying heck does it not have jurisdictional authority over stuff like this? If someone was shot in the Athletic Department, would they say the same? What the hell?)

A system that could repeatedly find in Larry Nassar’s favor is simply not equipped to deal substantively and meaningfully with abuse.

I agree with this. I’m not sure that presumption of innocence is the best place to start.

Of all of the problems you’ve mentioned (or were mentioned above), the presumption of innocence is the only one that applies to the schlubs. You weaken presumption of innocence without addressing other stuff (look at Marchmaine’s criticisms, for example), you’re going to be giving more power to the people who are already powerful.

The answer to Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? isn’t “well, we need to take away one of the few things protecting the schlubs”. It’s we need better watchmen watchmen.

Though, I’ll grant, it’s a hell of a lot easier to take away one of the few things protecting the schlubs…Report

@Jaybird It is not lessening the presumption of innocence to investigate these reports more aggressively, nor does it lessen the presumption of innocence to punish those who ignore it having been reported.

To put that another way, I wonder how many police departments respond to reported arsons by saying, “Nah, that never happened,” without bothering to at least check out the claim. I wonder how many visit the accused and ask, “Okay, but are you an expert in arsons?”Report

I wonder how many police departments respond to reported arsons by saying, “Nah, that never happened,” without bothering to at least check out the claim. I wonder how many visit the accused and ask, “Okay, but are you an expert in arsons?”

That’s not a problem with the presumption of innocence, though.

If you want me to agree that there’s a problem that needs to be addressed, hey, I’m there.

If you want to start saying that the problem is with the presumption of innocence, then I am saying that the problem is not with the presumption of innocence.

Please don’t interpret me saying “there is not a problem with the presumption of innocence” as me saying that there is not a problem. There *IS* a problem.

This problem will not be addressed by doing freaking *ANYTHING* with the presumption of innocence. Don’t even bring the presumption of innocence into it.

We have corrupt cops. We have lazy cops. We have a cult of expertise. Heck, we could even get into issues involving the problems involved with race that happen to be here.

But the presumption of innocence is one of the circles of salt we have around the pentagram that is our civilization. We don’t want to touch the circle of salt. That would be bad.Report

The presumption of innocence exists legally; we can agree that it should (although I suspect we both agree that it does not to nearly the extent that some people like to insist upon). The cultural presumption of innocence though is something else.Report

@jaybird “The people surrounding Nassar didn’t care whether he was guilty or innocent.” We very much disagree about this, which may be near the root of our issue. I think it would be entirely fair to accuse these folks of fully believing in Nassar’s innocence. It did not occur to them that it could be the other way.Report

Because I’m pretty sure that you know that the bishops and cardinals sweeping stuff under the rug there knew that stuff was going on. Seriously. If a Catholic were arguing what you’re arguing right now, how much contempt would you have for their beliefs in the pristine naivety of their leadership?

Is it one of those things where you want to believe that this secular institution is significantly different from the obviously wicked and hypocritical religious one?Report

I’d say that 2) requires a lot more work before I’d believe it to be true. Maybe it was, the first or second time. But at some point, everyone knew, at some level, that he was guilty, but by then, it was more important to protect the institution.Report

I think THIS is a big part of the problem today and what people fear will happen with a #metoo movement that is already going sideways. The social media tools available to ‘culture’ to attack people they have already decided are guilty are many. Monica Lewinsky has talked at length about how her life was destroyed because her scandal happened at the dawn of the internet. That problem is a thousand times worse now. When you have self-righteous people on both sides of the aisle that feel justified in doing these things, it’s a recipe for abuse.Report

Arson is probably a bad analogy because there is usually a deep-pocketed corporation who has an interest: the insurance company that has to pay off. No fire department can afford (for long) to simply blow off the insurance companies with a “We’re not going to investigate the cause.” If the fire department rules arson, no police organization can afford (for long) to blow off the insurance companies with a “We’re not going to investigate the possibility that the policy holder set the fire.”

A similar thing is starting to happen in sports in the US, at least in the smaller ones that operate under the auspices of the US Olympic Committee. The insurance companies that underwrite the liability policies are pushing much harder for the governing bodies to take abuse/assault seriously, institute training programs, and bring the authorities in when there’s suspicion.Report

A lot of what gets confused in discussions of “presumption of innocence” is blurring of distinctions between legal action and social censure. The standards we use are quite rightly different.

In the same way that the standards are looser for civil trials than criminal ones, the presumption of innocence for being imprisoned might be very high, but lower for employment dismissal, and even lower for social censure.

Maybe the police needed more evidence to arrest Nassar, but the university didn’t need as much to dismiss him.

Its funny how, if the university had dismissed him for simply being “the wrong fit”, or “not a team player”, or any of the other hundred bullshit reasons companies give at-will employees, no one would have batted an eye, but dismissing him because “we suspect you might be creepy” is considered unjust.Report

A smart employer, of course, does dismiss a suspected creep for an ostensibly anodyne reason.

While we wish it weren’t the case, there are such things as false claims and rumors exaggerating reality to the point of deceptiveness. This is sometimes motivated by malice and sometimes by negligence.

And there are such things, as the Nassar story illustrates, of true claims of awful things which are disbelieved for no good reason.

Social sanction and loss of employment, while less serious than imprisonment, are nevertheless serious things with real consequences for those who receive it. It is right that such things are withheld until some level of evidence accumulates. Nassar’s story is one in which that critical level of evidence was far exceeded yet nothing happened. The OP calls out the root cause: a “deep cultural cancer that leads to the wholesale dismissal of victims”.

That’s the issue here, as I see it.

It’s not that there ought not be a presumption of innocence. Taking victims seriously and dealing with them with respect and an eye towards preventing future harm can be consistent with the principle that guilt is not established by an accusation and sanction ought to be withheld until guilt is established. While navigating between these two indispensable priorities may often be difficult, it is possible to imagine doing so. The more difficult problem is that ugly things baked in to our culture blind decision-makers to seeing when that presumption has been overcome.Report

It also isn’t enough to talk about this from a systems approach, where we assume the machinery of justice delivers the same output of justice for the same input of facts.

The most important input is the social rank of the persons involved. Had Nassar been a janitor and his accusers daughters of alumni,or had he been black and they white, the machinery would have returned a far different output.Report

While we wish it weren’t the case, there are such things as false claims and rumors exaggerating reality to the point of deceptiveness. This is sometimes motivated by malice and sometimes by negligence.

Rumors are easy to dismiss, because there aren’t actual accusers.

As for false claims…there are places where, in fact, there might be incentive to make things up. (As Republicans have alleged with the Kavanaugh accusers.) Now, I’m not saying no accusators can have an incentive to lie, nor am I saying that everyone who does have an incentive to lie is lying. I’m not even saying people can’t lie randomly, for reason.

What I am saying is, at a certain point, if multiple people with no obvious incentive to lie about someone, and have no connection, have come forward and recounted abuse allegations, one of two things must be true: a) there is actual abuse, or b) the person being accused often behaves in a manner so badly that people who interact with them have responded by making up abuse allegations.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical world where Nassar hadn’t touched anyone at all, medical or otherwise, and his patients literally just made up the entire thing. Well, if he’s in a public-interacting position and multiple unrelated people dislike him enough to make up _serious abuse allegations_ against him…his employer should logically, at some point, ask: Is this really the guy I should be employing? A doctor who is, at best, so horrifically off-putting that his patients keep trying to _frame him for sexual assault_? What the hell sort of behavior on his part is causing them to do that? I should investigate this.

It’s perfectly reasonable to say ‘Social sanction and loss of employment, while less serious than imprisonment, are nevertheless serious things with real consequences for those who receive it.‘, but honestly, there are a lot of really bad reasons to fire people.

‘Your interaction with other humans while on our dime, regardless of what you are _actually_ doing, is _somehow_ resulting in multiple sexual assault allegations being leveled at you.’ is…not a particularly bad reason to fire someone.

I mean, if you want to argue that we should extend employment protections _that_ far, maybe we should, but let’s first extend those protections to, for example, ‘cannot fire workers for being sick’ and ‘cannot fire workers for refusing to work off-the-clock’. Firing people for ‘behaving in a manner that repeatedly attracts sexual assault allegations and seriously damaging this company’s reputation’ is, like, way way down the list of things we should protect. (And, as we’ve seen, companies don’t even seem to fire people for that anyway!)Report

“if the university had dismissed him for simply being “the wrong fit”, or “not a team player”, or any of the other hundred bullshit reasons companies give at-will employees, no one would have batted an eye”

Investigate him as little as possible and transfer him to another parish?Report

the problem I see with eliminating a presumption of innocence is that the people who are already unfairly treated in the justice system will just be more unfairly treated. And the people who manage to slide through now will still manage to slide through.

Yes, the young women should have been listened to and Nassar is a piece of (redacted). Same with Cosby. Same with any man who thinks he’s entitled to that kind of thing.

One thing I’m realizing in all of this is that almost every woman I know has SOME story. In some cases (like mine), it’s relatively minor issues and it was with a same-aged classmate doing something you didn’t want them doing. In other cases, worse cases, it’s an older man using his influence to get what he wants.

People are gross and awful and I don’t know what the answer is, but my faith in humanity is kinda at an all-time low.Report

Let’s just be very clear about what the actual problem is here. It is not the Presumption of Innocence. The real issue is the Protection (or Poison[1]) of Position.

Nasser was protected because he was in a powerful enough position that accusations against him would threaten the positions of others around him, hence he was protected. Because there was no larger threat against protecting him.

[1] A poor position can be terrible. If a victim of a violent crime is known (or suspected) of being a gang member (etc.), the police will probably not devote much in the way of resources to solving the crime. Likewise, a positional differential, such as a respected doctor and a young gymnast, can result in people not taking the accusation seriously.Report

@oscar-gordon When it comes to rape and child sexual abuse, I really don’t think Protection of Position (which I agree is key in understanding injustice overall) is really enough to cover it.

People are *willfully* blind to this happening. And not that they should be treated differently, but rich young white women who report stranger rape on the streets are treated just as poorly and indifferently by police as are other victims. Many many women are treated so poorly by hospitals when they go to get rape kits done that they feel re-victimized. This includes rich white women with female nurses. Which Power of Position does not cover.

Within families, people who have relatively more power in the family overall once they are adults, are either disbelieved, or can be *believed* by family members who nonetheless refuse to treat the accused within the family any differently than before, and expect forgiveness of the accused by their victims, often in a sort of unconscious blindness that mirrors the willful blindness of institutional actors. Again, this happens whether the victims currently have more or less power than the accused does.

It’s not just cultural presumption of innocence, it’s cultural denial of guilt by any means necessary.

Other crimes aren’t treated this way, especially when there’s no Power of Position to account for it.Report

@oscar-gordon I understand your desire to separate the legal principle of Presumption of Innocence from the social desperation to treat guilty, dangerous people as innocents, and I would even agree with you IF the socially desperate didn’t continually drag the presumption of innocence into the social realm as part of their defenses.

Given that that happens all the time, there’s no way in heck you’re going to convince me the two things don’t have a relationship.Report

Denial of Guilt is usually a case of, “I know Larry, Larry would never do what you are accusing him of, you are wrong, or lying (because if you are telling the truth, then I am a horrible person[1] for allowing Larry to fool me, and I can’t handle that)”.

I Can’t Be Bothered stems from someone recognizing that taking the accusation seriously would open up a whole world of work/trouble/headaches for the person hearing the accusation, and they just don’t want to deal with that right now (if ever). Thus they will look for any reason or rationale, no matter how thin, to discount the accuser.

Neither has anything to do with Presuming Innocence, other than the person may float the concept as cover for the real reason they don’t want to believe the accuser.

That said, when you have people close to the accused engaging in Denial of Guilt, and people in authority who really just Can’t Be Bothered, there is a very good chance justice will be delayed or denied. I don’t know how to overcome Denial of Guilt, since that often comes from a pretty emotional place. But Can’t Be Bothered can be fixed legislatively. If every person in authority over Nassar was under indictment, from the University and the various PDs who ignored things, people would start to be bothered.

[1] Because we have a weird idea that somehow being conned by a person is reflective of the intellect or character of the person being conned.Report

“Neither has anything to do with Presuming Innocence, other than the person may float the concept as cover for the real reason they don’t want to believe the accuser.”

The problem is that they float it to *themselves* as an excuse. And they insist on it to society. So if all those Denial of Guilt people insist they are Presuming Innocence people, how is there not a relationship between the two groups? The people insisting constitute the relationship, by making the two circles in the Venn diagram overlap.

It may be a crappy, unjust relationship, that doesn’t deserve to exist, but the relationship is there.

Also, very very very often, in social rather than legal contexts, “Presuming Innocence” is “I don’t want to believe these people” even when it presents as you describe, as needing some more significant evidence before making a judgement. The bar gets set to some mythological standard that reality almost never matches. (This is why the thing I usually harp on is dismantling myths, rather than who is presuming what.)Report

Yes, people lie to others and themselves and cloak their pathologies in high minded ideals. So we should, what, dispense with the high minded ideals because people will co-opt them? Or should we call bullshit on those people for cloaking themselves in righteousness?

Like I said before, we don’t burn the savanna to kill the lion. You go hunt the damn lion, or you find a way to live with it.

I mean, really, what is being asked here? Assuming we aren’t actually trying to attack the legal standard, what is the ask?

That our civil authorities take victim claims seriously? I am happy to sign on to that.

That private authorities take victims claims seriously? I’ll sign onto that as well. And in both of the above, I think we should be some serious teeth behind such things. Make it hurt for people to have an attitude of I Can’t Be Bothered.

But are you asking that ‘We’ believe the victims? And by ‘We’, I mean everyone in our entire society? Good luck with that.Report

I’m asking that “We” and by that I mean the overwhelming consensus of our society, not “everyone”, stop operating on Denial of Guilt and start operating on Likelihood of Trauma Being Real.

And if that means offering people who claim to be victims more of the Presumption of Innocence, leaning toward innocence, weight shifted toward innocence, we currently mostly afford the accused – again, *socially* not legally – we don’t huff and puff about it on the premise that Presumption of Innocence (legal) requires that we apply Presumption of Innocence (social) to the accused at the expense of their accusers.

Yup, it’s a huge ask. Probably bigger than the limited and specific ones you list. But the ones you list are not ever going to *work* as long as the one I’m asking for doesn’t happen.Report

I honestly don’t think asking that people give accusers a modicum of respect and trust that they are forthright is too much[1]. I certainly don’t have a problem doing that.

But let’s not kid ourselves, people really like binaries. It’s really hard for people to hold the idea in their head that an accuser and an accused are both deserving of a measure of respect until investigations are concluded and the facts are laid out.

But nope, people can’t seem to do that. If the accuser is being forthright, then the accused must be guilty; and if the accused is to be believed, then the accuser must be lying or mistaken. And if the person you are talking to feels differently than you, they are either a fool or carrying water for a monster. Because sexual assault is just another culture war proxy fight.

But let’s be honest about what will happen if we penalize the accused too harshly when the facts are thin on the ground.

[1] ETA: We certainly don’t have this problem when it is the state accusing a person of wrongdoing.Report

@oscar-gordon I think we almost certainly disagree on what was being presumed of Nassar. Multiple examples – most notably, 1992 and 2004 – show people confronted with evidence, or allegations of available evidence, and either flat out refusing to investigate it (1992) or accepting Nassar’s explanation (2004). Those people thought, for certain, that Nassar was innocent.Report

Yep,we disagree. Prove your case. Demonstrate to me those people thought Nassar was innocent. It’s quite simple to do. Show me when those people took what they knew to the authorities because they trusted that a person like Nassar would be afforded the full weight of the legal ideal.

Remember, Nassar was white, and well respected, with powerful friends. He could afford quality legal representation. He is one of the few people who will not be railroaded by the system.

Again, people who are presuming innocence trust the system to reach the correct result.

But people who bury things are not presuming innocence, they are denying guilt or can’t be bothered. I don’t care what they claim, I look to what they did.Report

As I said the last time this came up: If several people independently allege somewhat similar abuse from someone in a position of authority, there needs to be some sort of process by which that person is, _at least_, monitored and not allowed to interact with people alone.

Nassar was, by the plain facts of the complaints and because he admitted to physically doing what he did (He just always tried to justify it as medical), repeatedly committing deliberate medical malpractice. Doctors are not supposed to do things that make their patients extremely uncomfortable, especially things like manipulating their genitalia, without their full consent, and certainly shouldn’t be doing it over and over. Once or twice is perhaps a screwup, they forgot to clearly ask or explain something, and all doctors commit slight accidental malpractice at one point or another, but he apparently did it _all the time_. He didn’t even slightly show any concern about a behavior of his that multiple patients had complained about and several actively resisted! That is utterly unacceptable behavior for a doctor even if those _were_ actual medical procedures he was doing.

Yet his employers never said ‘Look, we’re trusting you that this is medical, but you can’t keep doing it suddenly without their full informed consent and someone else there to monitor it. We’ve had too many complaints.’

Why didn’t they say that? Because…they did not think it was their job to provide any oversight. Other doctors were told of this thing that _had to be_ malpractice, and did nothing.Report

I think many of you are missing Sam’s point. He’s not talking about the presumption of innocence regarding conviction – Nassar’s case didn’t get hung up by a jury acquitting him for lack of evidence, nor because a prosecutor refused to bring charges because they didn’t think a jury would convict.

Nassar got away with it for so long because people who could and should have investigated allegations either didn’t do so, or made only the most token effort. It is this presumption – that Nassar was innocent without even investigating that Sam is calling for an end to here.Report

Depends on whether there are any institutions that actually handle this stuff the way that you think it ought.

If we can’t find a single institution that handles this the way that you think it ought to be handled (and not just American culture, let’s hit all of them across the world), then we might have a bigger problem than culture.

@jaybird It wasn’t only the cops who treated it that way. People’s parents treated it that way, people’s coaches treated it that way, other doctors treated it that way.

Culture is, specifically, particular social expressions of people’s humanity within particular small or enormous communities.

And for this problem, I think humans do have a problem, but that problem is worse in some places and cultures than it is in others.

For example, it’s worse in Prince Edward Island than it is in Nova Scotia, as far as several federal reviews can figure out.

Teasing out *why* some places are more poisoned than others is no doubt incredibly difficult work, and pretending it’s particular to precise institutions or precise cultures and no one else has a problem is not true or effective — but pretending it is a purely universal, unfixable, homogeneous problem is also not true or effective.Report

This is a good summation of what happened with Nassar, however as Oscar points out, Presumption of Innocence is a legal principle and the bedrock of our justice system. If Sam is making the argument that people need to be more willing to investigate claims against someone, report them, etc then perhaps he should choose better terminology that doesn’t seem to directly challenge the way our legal system was set up to work.

(And if the legal system is failing, it doesn’t mean it was set up incorrectly, it means it is being run incorrectly – two different things)Report

I know I’ve responded to a few comments on here but I haven’t really given my own take on Sam’s piece as a whole, so here goes:

In the traditional legal sense of the phrase, the thought of doing away with or weakening the “presumption of innocence” is a non-starter for me. But that’s in a due process, fair trial sense. I understand Sam to mean something else, as he has explained- that law enforcement should not necessarily use that as the starting point, and end up with a benefit of the doubt that is never tested.

But not starting out with that type of clean slate has its problematic results as well. That particular assumption made by law enforcement is rare, in my experience, and reserved for folks like Nassar- “upstanding” folks “who would never.” More often, cops zero in on a suspect early on and then look for evidence that fits their theory, ignoring that which doesn’t, which is how we end up with unfair or wrongful convictions.

I don’t know how to fix it except for better trained detectives who can objectively weigh all evidence rather than fitting it into their preconceived bias. Not sure how we get there.

(I realize in re-reading this that I need to account for a difference between having an unknown suspect then prematurely zeroing in on one, vs. having a complaining witness who tells you exactly who did it. At that point some of that “clean slate” should be marred, but I still wouldn’t want the investigation to stop there, or to then ONLY look for the evidence that fits the narrative.)Report

@jaybird The presumption of innocence is a specific legal concept (which is occasionally applicable given what we know about the legal system) and a broader cultural one. Those defending men accused of assault often conflate the two, insisting, for example, that somebody like Kavanaugh is owed the presumption of innocence, even though he isn’t on trial. There is no fundamental difference between that assertion in Kavanaugh’s case and the assertion in cases like Nassar’s. In both cases, the idea is to demand that certain folks are to be presumed innocent always, no matter what indicates otherwise.Report

@jaybird Of course they have the same problem, but for specifically the same reason: that presuming men (or, at the very least, some men) innocent is the default conclusion when accusations are made.Report

“I also very strongly believe that Judge Kavanaugh, like all Americans, deserves the presumption of innocence and that it was equally as important for him to have the opportunity to address the charges and defend himself.”

The shame! Someone should have told Corker there are different rules because Sam said so…

It’s striking how many liberals in this thread disagree with the author. That also males me a bit more glad to know those liberals.Report

Well, Corker’s wrong, of course. The threshold for public service, especially as a justice in the country’s highest court, is not and should not be the legal standard applicable in a court of law. Kavanaugh said crazy things today about Dem conspiracies against him and revenge for his role in the Starr investigation of Bill Clinton which will forever taint the court and his role as a justice, should he be confirmed. He ought to be disqualified on those terms alone. But because lots of conservatives (including you!) actually *do* view Ford’s allegations as a Dem conspiracy against him, he gets a pass. He’s just an impartial truth-teller. A principled caller of balls and strikes. He’s expressed no animus against Dems which might inform his future rulings as Justice, but instead made a bold statement of the facts as Red America sees them.

Also, it’s a bit rich for Corker to claim a presumption of innocence standard when the GOP has gone to great lengths to make sure that that very presumption can’t be overcome by facts and evidence gathered from investigation the claims.Report

Ahh. And supposing you’re right, punishment for the Dem conspiracy is to confirm a conservative nominee credibly accused of sexual assault? I mean, I don’t understand what the Dem conspiracy has to do with whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed or not.*

*Unless, like Kavanaugh, you think the allegations are fabricated and part of a grand plan to punish the GOP for losing an election yadayadablahblahblahReport

I think that because of what they did things have been muddled so much that most of us don’t know who to believe. I think that Ford told a compelling story today and assuming she was truthful about being assaulted, I feel very sorry for her. She did not, however, present anything that made me more likely to believe her than I was yesterday.Report

Kavanaugh has lied under oath in ’06. He lied when he was introduced by Trump as the nominee. He lied repeatedly during the first round of hearings when asked about his role in the Starr investigation, about stolen Dem emails, about his knowledge of Kozinski’s history of sexual harassment, about contacts with lawyers in Kasowitz’ law firm… Hell, he lied about watching Ford’s testimony today.Report

To put the above in some context, I’m not aware of Gorsuch lying under oath during the hearings prior to his confirmation. I didn’t like his legal views, and I thought he was a smug little prick, but I didn’t think he was, or is, a fundamentally dishonest partisan hack.Report

@stillwater Now, now, you can’t be in our comments section trying to use people’s actions against them. You must assume that they are telling the absolute honest truth no matter how many other times they’ve lied, what with how unfair it would be to introduce bring evidence into consideration when discussing anything. That’s called the tu quoque. And you mustn’t ever violate this sacred concept, what with how unbelievably bent of shape some people get about such things.Report

He also keeps lying about how ‘other people have issued sworn statements that the party did not happen’. But no one has claimed that. People have written in sworn statements that they do not remember the party, which is different.

This seems like a minor technical thing until you remember we’re considering him for Justice of the Supreme Court, and he sure as hell better be able to understand the distinction between someone saying under oath ‘I do not remember that happening.’ and saying under oath ‘That did not happen.’.

Kavanaugh keeps saying things are not true, or at least saying things that cause people to _conclude_ things that are not true.

For example, as I’ve pointed out here before, he wasn’t even asked_about his role in Pickering’s nomination. He was asked if he knew about Pickering’s unethical behavior. He said no (Which indeed appears true) and then offered the information that Pickering ‘not one of the judicial nominees I was primarily handling.’

He’s…possibly technically correct in that, but he did a lot of work on Pickering and other lawyers seemed to think he had enough of a role to run Pickering stuff past him. But my point is that a) this wasn’t even asked of him, this was a deliberate ‘step forward and mislead people’, and b) there’s not really any reason that his involvement with Pickering would even be unethical anyway, as long as he didn’t know about Pickering asking lawyers (Including those before his court) to write letters of support for him. And not only did he not, there’s not really any reason he would know about that! A simple ‘I did not know that was going on’ and Kavanaugh is completely off the hook.

But Kavanaugh is, at this point, _very clearly_ the sort of person who, when presented with even the slightest hint of reproach, will _lie his ass off_. He supported Pickering, cheerlead his nomination as part of the Bush administration, and then Pickering was caught in a scandal and Kavanaugh is like ‘Whoa, I had nothing to do with Pickering at all!’, instead of just saying ‘I worked some on the Pickering nomination, that was literally my job as a lawyer working for the White House.’ or even ‘I personally supported him, so made an error of judgment with regard to his character.’.Report

But Kavanaugh is, at this point, _very clearly_ the sort of person who, when presented with even the slightest hint of reproach, will _lie his ass off_.

Exactly. I understand why Ford’s testimony is dominating the argument against him right now, but his repeated lying under oath really ought to be sufficient to not only kill his SC nomination but remove him from the DC circuit as well.Report

There’s a certain sort of person who thinks they can twist facts to however it suits them by prevaricating. They get asked a question, they answer a slightly different one. Or they can see a question coming up, so they offer a misleading statement in advance. They are constantly twisting the facts to make themselves look better.

This is what I think Kavanaugh was doing with the ‘not one of the judicial nominees I was primarily handling’ statement. He thought he was going to be asked ‘How much did you work on Pickering?’, so mislead them in advance, and then, sure enough, headed off the question.

And stuff that can’t be proven, like whether or not he officially ‘knew’ the emails he’d seen were stolen, he feels free to just lie about…no one can prove what he knew in his own head. So he can claim he didn’t see them, and if someone discovers he did, well, he ‘didn’t know’ that those were them.

This sort of behavior is basically what we expect of politicians. It’s literally the premise of jokes about them.

It’s _really_ not what we expect of judges. Especially highly-placed Federal judges.

Kavanaugh is a politician. I don’t mean he has politically-ideological goals, although he clearly does. I mean he’s a politician in that he interacts with the world and others _as_ a politician, where everything is filtered through a lens of ‘What can I say here will make me look better without being later provable as an actual lie?’ instead of ‘What is the actual truth and how do I convey it so people know it?’Report

As a foreigner, I’m astonished that’s not already the standard in America.

It was one of those things that was a norm, and not any sort of official rule. And thus the Republicans ignored it.

For quite some time, in fact. The entire Federalist Society pipeline is a system that is trying to indoctrinate judges in overly political things _without_ it being too obvious. It, and the entire right, has carefully been teaching them how to dodge the political stuff, how to say certain things and not say certain things.

Everyone has to pretend the Supreme Court justices won’t make political decisions, including people who have _overtly made political promises_ about what sort of Supreme Court justices they would put on the court! For some reason, no Democrat ever turns to the Republican Senator next to them at a hearing and asks ‘Hey, you promised to put judges on the bench that would overturn Roe v. Wade, and he just said it was ‘settled law’, so do you think _this guy_ is going to do that? If not, why are you going to confirm him? If so, then you think he was misleading us?’

And before anyone says ‘Democrats do that too’….no, actually, Democratic nominees tend to be rather overt about their ‘political philosophy’, which is usually extremely mild if it exists at all. (1)

Democratic nominees tend to not be actual political operatives, whereas about…half the Republican ones tend to be. And their dissatisfaction with only ‘half’ is the reason the Federalist Society even exists. Republican presidents have accidentally put some non-political operatives on the bench that their side thought were political operatives.

Kavanaugh is just…not particularly good at not being obvious. He’s an entitled asshole, and he spent a decade as part of the right-wing hate-orgy against the Clintons.

1) The most common criticism from the right is that the Democratic court nominees ‘aren’t opposed enough to government power’, the sort of nonsensical moral stance that the right pretends it has except when they want to argue the exact opposite and the government should be able to torture people or wiretap without warrants or racially profile people or etc etc…Report

I would too, depending upon what you mean. I would want to exclude positions like Kavanaugh’s (or, say, someone involved with an impeachment of Trump if things go that way), but I don’t think it would make sense to include someone from a traditionally-qualifying job like the Solicitor General’s office.Report

Here’s Mitch McConnell making the exact same claim. No investigation necessary. No followup necessary. He says he’s innocent, so he must be. Just like Nassar said he was.

It’s amazing what some men are willing to say in service of other men. It’s equally amazing what lengths they’re willing to go to make sure they never know the truth. One wonders how many victims it would have taken for Kavanaugh’s defenders to suspect that Nassar wasn’t being honest. 100? 200? The full 400+?Report

Here’s Jeff Flake basing his vote for Kavanaugh on the same theory of culturally presumed innocence. Kavanaugh’s defenders are insisting that is owed this assumption more than an investigation should be undertaken. It is the same defense that used for Nassar, that was used for Catholic Priests, that was used for Scoutmasters, that was used for Jerry Sandusky. Over, and over, and over, the need for men to be presumed innocent trumps all other concerns, including the need to at least investigate the claims.Report

FWIW, it seems that Flake being confronted by two women along the same lines as what you said in your post, has perplexed and complicated his view of the matter since he said what you link to. Not enough to get him to not vote to send it to the floor, but enough for him to want the investigation done.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

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Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.